Sale of Jeff Koons' piece this week is the latest art-auction spectacle

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A man poses next to Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit” from the Masterpieces from The Collection of S.I. Newhouse at Christie’s New York press preview on May 3, 2019 as part of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art evening sale. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE – MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION – TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTIONTIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images

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To the auctioneers at Christie’s, Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit” is a mashup that combines “a Minimalist sheen with a naïve sense of play.”

To Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s dad, Robert, the sculpture is a very expensive gift to himself.

Koons’ “Rabbit” was sold Wednesday night for more than $91 million at Christie’s in New York, setting a record for the most expensive work by a living artist to be sold at auction. The 3-foot-tall silver bunny was one of 11 works offered from the collection of magazine publisher S.I. Newhouse, the longtime chief of Condé Nast who died in 2017.

“The work is considered the holy grail of Koons works among certain collecting circles, and the bunny’s allure was burnished by the fact that Newhouse was its longtime owner,” Artnet News writes. “It also received an extraordinary pre-sale display at Christie’s with a custom-built room that perched the rabbit on a pedestal surrounded by lighting mimicking a James Turrell installation.”

But the moment that Mnuchin’s representative nailed the winning bid was worth the price of admission alone. Check it out here, along with other memorable moments in art-auction history:

Patrick May is an award-winning writer for the Bay Area News Group working with the business desk as a general assignment reporter. Over his 34 years in daily newspapers, he has traveled overseas and around the nation, covering wars and natural disasters, writing both breaking news stories and human-interest features. He has won numerous national and regional writing awards during his years as a reporter, 17 of them spent at the Miami Herald.

CLICK HERE if you are having trouble viewing these photos on a mobile device. There’s nothing shy about Memorial Day Weekend. It’s the unofficial start to summer, so let’s get busy and immerse ourselves in fun, food and tasty adult beverages (not necessarily in that order). Here are seven ways to kick it this weekend, from an amazing choice of fairs...